Medurat Hashevet

I've just seen the second screening of this film at the berlinale.joseph cedar is hardly known at all in germany and so i thought i'd seen one of these first'n'nice-but-well... movies - and was caught off guard. the movie tell the story of three women (mother and two daughters) living in the israel of 1981.the mother is a widow since one year and the film shows how she and her daughters cope with the situation. so the story sounds simple but the mr. cedar has found a really good way of waving backgrounds around it. as there are the settlements-movement and the male dominated society. he really manages to give an impression of a society by showing people act and live in this society.

one of the best movies i saw in months!!

I just saw this movie tonight as part of the Seattle International Film Festival and I knew to expect something great because it won the best feature film "Ophir" in Israel (like Oscar award). I was pleasantly surprised that it was more than just the simple story that is described in the synopsis. It is a human story with a lot of heart. The movie explores falling in love from three different perspectives. It includes all the emotions that go with it. It also shows three different approaches to dealing with the opposite sex and it seems they each learn a bit from each other. The message is universal but the film is unique. Go see it!

Take it from me, as one who is blood and flesh of this community, this is an extremely poignant and ACCURATE film, aside from being first-class cinema. Watching Asi Dayan as the founder of a settlement, Moshe Ivgy as a religious-Zionist loser/tragic hero and the hysterical Yehoram Gaon play an ASHKENAZI cantor was an incredible combination. Enjoy!

I think this policy of writing a minimum of ten lines is quite stupid as i am sitting at work right now and do not have the time to compose a magnum opus - this is a stupid policy that undermines intelligent people like myself who do not write long dissertations on films and know that most people do not have the patience to read such diatribes. Thank you.

It's too easy to dismiss this film as just another dump on an Orthodox Community and/or the West Bank settlements. There really is a Bnei Akiva and settlements so I can see this kind of thing happening. Probably because I'm not Jewish I can see that the film depicts universal situations that could likely happen in any country or culture other than Bnei Akiva or Orthodox Judaism. I've been at church camps where the "bad boys" have sung dirty songs in a corner by themselves. I haven't seen sexual molestation as happens in this film but I wouldn't say that it's never happened at a church camp. Leaders all over the world try to cover up a scandal the way Motke tries, doing the wrong thing just to preserve the image of their business (organization, political movement, whatever). The search for love is the most universal desire of all. Rachel and Yossi are in a situation where it's extremely difficult to find love, when we're over 40. It happens but not often enough. This film, like many films from countries with unpopular reputations, should have gained more recognition than it did.

Yehoram Gaon deserves special recognition for coming out of retirement to take on a small part in the film. He could have easily rested on his reputation but he assumes the role of a not particularly likable pompous ass and does it well. Yehoram Gaon was the teenage idol of Israel in the 1960's. He deserves special credit for allowing himself to be photographed old, balding and with his gut hanging over his cummerbund. That's real bravery. But he proves in this film he still has it as a singer in a memorable scene of a cantorial concert. Yehoram Gaon could sing chazanut to this Gentile for hours and I wouldn't mind.

Michaela Eshet also deserves special recognition for her portrayal of a single mother dealing with raising teenage daughters as she simultaneously goes on the dating market after her year of mourning. IMDb doesn't list many film performances of Michaela Eshet so I must assume that her expertise comes from the stage.

This is not a perfect film. The Hebrew title "Medurat Hashevet"should have been more literally translated into English as "Tribal Campfire" to provide a better description of the story line. It would have been better to see Tami's molesters punished, Motke demoted and all the other loose ends of the various situations tied up but there's only so much that can be accomplished in the standard two hours. I'll give this movie nine stars out of ten.

"Campfire (Medurat Hashevet)" will probably draw the most attention for its insights into West Bank settlers of the 1980's, but I found it more intriguing as a moving and humor-filled portrait of a family caught at the conflict between feelings and society, particularly in a boys will be boys culture.

Like "Broken Wings (Knafayim Shvurot)," this is an Israeli family with teenagers struggling with apolitical grief, but that was a secular family. Like "Upside of Anger," there's a grieving mom struggling with teenage daughters as all are dealing with their loneliness and sexuality. Like "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and "Smooth Talk," it deals with teen girls susceptibility to guys. "Saved!" showed teens dealing with some these issues in a comparable conservative community, but satirically unsympathetic.

Here instead we have a mother in a situation that would be difficult in any time, any place. The mother has just finished her year of mourning for her husband and is at loose ends, financially, emotionally and as a now single parent of daughters anxious to get on with their lives. All three are vulnerable to persuasion. But they happen to be a modern Orthodox family in Israel so their normal developmental stages are buffeted by religious and social strictures on their behavior.

The mother is attracted to the possibility of joining her husband's friends in a group to found a West Bank settlement, more for the companionship and structure it would give to her and her family's life than for zealotry. I'm sure American audiences miss a lot of the political references during scenes of organizing committee meetings, applicant interviews and singing, sloganeering and film viewing (let alone subtleties involved with types and angles of head coverings and length of skirts worn, eating habits and the summer fast day of Tisha b'Av), but the diversity of motivations and social hypocrisy of many of those involved does come through. Going through the process of dealing with these friends and their expectations makes her stronger as an individual, particularly as she reflects on her marriage and what she wants from future relationships.

The triangle of the younger and older women's relationships is among the most emotionally frank I've seen on film in its honesty about insecurities, confusions and peer pressure in male-female relationships, symbolized throughout by the father's car and how they and the guys around them deal with it.

While the mother is pushed to re-enter the dating pool and explores a relationship with some similarity to how Catherine Keener sweetly handles "The 40 Year Old Virgin," the older daughter focuses on her one-track minded hunky soldier boyfriend, seems to be rebelliously secular and is opposed to moving.

The younger daughter absorbs all these contradictory signals. There's a marvelous scene of her exuberantly dancing to romantic pop music at home by herself that is straight out of "My So-Called Life" (or the totemic equivalent for guys "Risky Business") to show that in the U.S. she'd be considered a typical teen ager. Her curiosity about boys is therefore not surprising, so that the adults around her seem rigidly clueless in not expecting that restlessness from her when the appeal of the bad boy is clearly universal. There are occasional references to the complexities of a diversifying Israel that Americans can understand, as when the mother comments the B'nei Akiva youth group isn't the same as when she was young.

The actresses are refreshingly not Hollywood beautiful, though it is clearly a running visual joke when the safe guy choices are not just nerdy but are bursting their untucked shirt buttons, even as it is sympathetic to their pressures as well, making the alternatives that much more attractive.

While this is no "Norma Rae" or "My Brilliant Career" as a feminist tract, nor is it the anti-Orthodox agit-prop of "Kadosh," the film has a strong, fair and balanced humanistic and sweetly forgiving point to make about women in a male-dominated society who are expected to act a certain way and the consequences they face when they step out of line -- and how the men who love them can be supportive as they learn to live together.

While "Campfire" is distributed unrated by the MPAA in the U.S., as a parent I would give it a PG-13. It deals with some of the same issues as PG-rated "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" but in a more serious and mature way as applied to a younger teen.